Moroccan, Indian have lives Ruined by old, new Media, falsely Accused of Boston Bombing

US judges’ famous reluctance to apply libel laws because of the First Amendment may need to be revisited. We can’t be having peoples’ lives ruined by being falsely accused, with photographs of them going viral. In essence, contemporary mass and social media are turning everyone into a potential Salman Rushdie.

And geez, guys, Afro-Asia is a big place; they don’t actually all look alike.

The New York Post, you expect it from. But then a poster at Reddit.com fingered Sunil Tripathi, a Brown University student who went missing April 16. I’m a Reddit fan in general, but the often cavalier attitude there to posting pictures of people who don’t want them posted is one of the things wrong with it. In this case, what was done was egregious.

Let’s not soft pedal this: Reddit conducted a lynch. It was the epitome of what some argue is the “new journalism” in extreme form and showed up its many, many weaknesses. This was a despicable episode. Whatever its faults, I’ll take the NYTimes, Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal – and the rest of the “mainstream media,” whatever their faults. I trust reporters and I trust editors. I do not trust anonymous bloggers sitting in their basements, howling at the moon.

AM

Killarny, you seem to have missed cable coverage this week. CNN had people looking out for “Middle Eastern” men which didn’t exactly help the situation. There was an overwhelming amount of racist coverage in mainstream media which not only hurt innocents but may have delayed recognition of the suspects.

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